Relevance
by Mariner
Summary: A late night conversation in the Impala. With poetry.


**Relevance**

**By Mariner**

"I can't believe you got us run out of town."

"Oh, come on, that totally wasn't my fault."

"Not your fault?" Sam sat up with a grunt and glared at Dean over the back of the bench seat, partly because he couldn't believe what he was hearing and partly because the steering wheel digging into his hip was getting really annoying. Normally in circumstances like this, Dean would be the one scrunched up in the front while Sam took the marginally more spacious back seat, but tonight Dean had looked battered enough that Sam had offered to switch. He was kind of regretting that now.

Sleeping in the car had seemed like a lot more fun when he and Dean had been little. Then, it had seemed like an adventure. He and Dean bundled up in blankets in the back seat, Dad stuck in the front the way Sam was now. Once, when the weather was nice, Dad had actually built a campfire by the side of the road and they had toasted hot dogs for dinner before piling back into the Impala to sleep.

It had taken years for Sam to reclassify those nights from "times when Dad felt like camping" to "times when Dad couldn't scam enough money for a motel room." Years longer to discover first-hand just how uncomfortable a fully-grown man sleeping in the front seat of a car could get. He thought he could've happily gone a few more years without ever finding that last bit out.

"Not you fault?" he repeated incredulously. "You banged the mayor's daughter -- his _married_ daughter -- in the alley behind the bar. Up against a dumpster. Which, by the way, was not only stupid but also really gross."

"Don't knock it till you tried it." Dean's smirk was a little more lopsided than usual, what with the split lip and the egg-sized lump on his jaw, but he still managed to convey an amazing degree of smugness with it. "You saw Clarice. She was hot."

"_Married_, Dean. To the deputy sheriff. Whose nose you broke."

"Hey, he threw the first punch."

"Yeah, and you threw the next five."

It had been one of the more spectacular brawls Dean had ever started. Clarice's husband was a popular guy, apparently, and five of his friends had followed him into the alley once the sounds of fighting had become audible. Which meant that Sam had been obliged to wade in, because one couldn't really leave one's asshole brother to get stomped by six guys behind a dumpster, no matter how much the asshole brother in question might actually deserve it. Now he had a black eye, two sets of bloody knuckles and a really tender spot on his left side where one of the deputy's pals had gotten in a lucky swing with a pool cue. And he was still in better shape than Dean.

"You know," Dean said, "it's not like I did it on purpose. I mean, it's not like she was wearing a sign. Or even a wedding ring. And she totally came on to me."

"You could've said no."

"Why would I?" Dean looked genuinely puzzled, as if the concept of turning down a stranger in a random bar were alien and incomprehensible. There were times when Sam really wondered why he even bothered.

"Because," he grumbled, slumping back down onto the seat again, "if you'd kept it in your pants, we'd be sleeping in a motel room now instead of the car."

"If that stupid town had any gratitude, we'd be sleeping in a motel room instead of the car. We did clear that glaistig out of their community pool, after all. You'd think they'd show at least a _little_ appreciation."

"I think they did. I think that's why we're not sleeping in a jail cell tonight."

"Point. Then again, a jail cell would've had a cot. And indoor plumbing." Leather creaked in the back seat, punctuated by the occasional pained grunt as Dean tried to shift into a more comfortable position. "Shit. I think I pulled a muscle in my back or something."

Sam stared up at the Impala's roof and tried to keep his temper. He knew perfectly well there was no point in getting upset with Dean over crap like this. But it was one in the morning, and he was cold and bruised and stuck in the car for the night, and his memory kept replaying the image of Dean down on the ground in that alley, just barely rolling away from a kick that might've bashed his skull in if it had connected.

"Dammit, Dean, you could've been seriously hurt! Or worse. Are the things we hunt not bad enough? How goddamn _stupid_ would it have been to survive the glaistig and then get yourself killed by some of the people you saved?"

"Aww." Dean sounded amused now, though Sam had heard that tone often enough in his life to still detect the undertone of pain. "You were worried about me, Sammy. That's sweet."

"Well, someone has to worry about you, since you clearly won't do it yourself. God, Dean, why can't you ever act like--" He broke off, too frustrated to finish that sentence.

"Act like what?" The amusement in Dean's voice faded a little. "Like a normal person?"

"Never mind," Sam muttered. "Forget I said anything."

He was too tired to argue anymore, and apparently so was Dean. For a minute or so, the only sounds were Dean's slightly labored breathing and the soft chorus of cicadas outside. The interior of the Impala was warm and filled with the oddly comforting smells of leather and metal and the faint fake-pine scent on the polish Dean had used on the dashboard a couple of days before. Despite his annoyance and the discomfort of being crammed into far too small a space, Sam found himself dozing off, only to be snapped awake again by the sound of Dean's voice.

"We aren't no thin red 'eroes, nor we aren't no blackguards too." Dean's voice was so quiet, Sam had to strain to make out the words. "But single men in barricks, most remarkable like you. An' if sometimes our conduck isn't all your fancy paints, why, single men in barricks don't grow into plaster saints."

"Dude." Sam sat up so fast, he nearly banged his head on the roof. "Did you just quote _poetry_ at me?"

"Maybe." Dean's face was masked by the dark, but he sounded faintly defensive. "What, I can't have depths?"

"Dean, if I said anything like that to you, you'd call me a giant sappy girl."

"That's because you are a giant sappy girl."

"And you are..."

"A tough, kick-ass dude with hidden depths."

"Right. Come on did, where'd you learn it?"

"Ms Kendall, eleventh-grade English."

"Kendall, huh?" Sam rested his chin on the back of the seat and tried to remember where they'd lived when Dean was attending eleventh grade. "Hey, wasn't she the one you had a massive crush on?"

"Did not!"

"Did too. I remember. You actually did your homework all that year."

"Did not. Anyway, she did this thing where instead of having a final exam, we all had to pick a poem from the textbook and write an essay about how it was... relevant to our personal experience or some shit like that."

"And you picked 'Tommy Atkins.'" Of course. A poem about a soldier being treated like an outcast by the people he fights for. The only mystery was how Dean managed to explain his relevant personal experience in a high-school English essay without being hauled off for a psych evaluation. "So what did you write, exactly?"

"About Dad." Dean braced one hand against the back of the front seat and sat up, his movements slow and stiff. He rubbed the back of his neck with one hand, hissed, and slumped forward with his arms resting on his knees. "He used to tell me stuff about all the anti-war protests going on around the time he enlisted. Some of his friends stopped talking to him when he told them he was going. And then when he came back it was worse. People thinking he'd been out there killing babies or something." Dean's voice turned brittle on that last sentence, and Sam didn't need to see his face to know exactly what the cynical twist of his mouth looked like. "As if they had any clue."

"Oh," Sam said. "Dad never--" and then he had to stop, because there was no way to finish that sentence without sounding petulant and resentful, and that wasn't what he meant at all.

Sam wondered if Dean had showed their father the poem, and if Dad had liked it, if they had talked about it. He tried to think back, to recall if he had ever seen Dad reading anything that wasn't research or football scores, but the only thing that sprang to mind was a hazy memory of his father's voice rumbling through the sing-song lines of i Green Eggs and Ham /i in a forgotten motel room somewhere. If there was anything in John Winchester's reading repertoire between Dr. Seuss and _Malleus Maleficarum_, Sam didn't know what it was. But Dean apparently did.

Another lengthy silence descended. Even the cicadas seemed to be taking a breather.

"Dad told me," Dean said after a while, "because I wanted to hear."

"I know." The pang of regret was neither new nor unexpected, but not any less sharp for all of that. Sam wanted to say "I'm sorry" or "I'd ask him now if I could," but Dean already knew all that. So instead he said, "Man, you really had it bad for Ms Kendall, didn't you? Memorizing poetry and all."

"Shut up. I didn't memorize it."

"Uh-huh. That's why you could quote it at me ten years later."

"It got stuck in my head, that's all. You know. Like a song lyric."

"Right. Like... REO Speedwagon, maybe?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind." Sam yawned and lay down across the seat again. "Let's try and get some sleep, Dean. We've got a long drive tomorrow."

"Don't remind me." There was more creaking and grunting as Dean settled in for what was left of the night.

"Hey, Dean?"

"Hmmm...?"

"Maybe you could tell me. Some of the stuff you and Dad used to talk about."

"Can I get some sleep first?"

"Well, yeah. I didn't mean right _now_."

"Yeah, sure. Whatever. Good night, Sammy."

"Good night, Dean."


End file.
